Forks in the Road
by WWKC121
Summary: After the massive battle to rid the universe of the Lich, Finn has been cast to the far ends of the universe. Controlled by the Crown and seemingly forgotten, little hope remains. But his friends continue to search for him, and with the help of a fortuitous discovery, launch a rescue mission. Sequel to "The Left Path
1. Chapter 1

Hey guys! WWKC121 here! I'm back with Forks in the Road! Sorry it took so long, I've been going through some pretty crazy stuff. I was gone two weekends ago and was going to publish the first chapter last weekend, but literally right before I was about to write it my girlfriend broke up with me. That kind of put a damper on the rest of my day, and threw me right out of the writing mood. Since then I've had writer's block, but today I decided I'd buckle down and get this done. So without further ado, let's get to the story!

The breaking waves cascaded down the icy shore, violently pummeling the massive mountains. The Universe was inhabited in almost every nook and cranny by some sort of creature, save for here, at the poles of this icy planet, too cold for any living creature to survive unprotected, even the sturdy penguins that inhabited more southerly climes. This land had remained unchanged for the better part of a million years, and probably would remain the same way for another thousand. It was here that the Crown was born, all those years ago, and it still felt a small amount of nostalgia for the place. Returning home, after all those years, was a welcome prospect. Its current owner, even in his frost resistant state that the crown provided them with, was barely alive. A week ago they, or rather the crown, as the boy was too shell-shocked to respond cognitively, had awoken to find themselves falling, thousands of feet up, into this land of ice and snow. They had crash-landed into a snow bank, breaking the boy's left arm. After the boy had reawakened, the Crown had directed him its nearby home, deep in the mounds of ice and snow, at the ruins of an ancient, frozen village. That had been one victory for all of the fire and warmth out there, but the Crown knew everything would freeze in the end, if it waited long enough. Eventually the whole universe would go dark, and the Crown would have room for its new infinite empire of ice and snow.

But wait, what was this? There was something amiss. Deep in the heart of the boy, he was feeling… hope? Accursed emotion! It may not have been the warmest, but the steady heat was a nuisance. The crown directed its considerable psychic power, working to snuff the hope in its cradle. It amassed its thoughts into a single, icy spike, driving them into the brain of the boy, through the dark exterior of his mind to the small glowing center, rushing through, almost there and…

The spike stopped. A wall had appeared between the psychic spike and the glimmer of hope. Strong and red, the wall rotated in a hexagonal pattern. The Crown quickly traced through the boy's memories, searching for what this thing might possibly be. And then, the Crown found it.

_The Vault._

Sorry guys, I know it's short, but I've got major writer's block and haven't even finished planning past this point. I'll try to get an update to you tomorrow or Monday. Again, sorry.


	2. Earth and Fire

Wow! It's been a while. Sorry guys, I was gone for two weekends in a row and didn't have time during the week, but I've got free time now. It's kind of strange, but recently there was a sudden surge of Flame Prince/Finn fics replacing Fiolee as the majority, albeit temporarily. Go figure. But fellow Flinn shippers, keep on writing! At the very least we have a nice, stable number of updates and new fics that might have been increasing recently after the disaster that was Frost and Fire. Hmm. Maybe I should do a study. Anywhoo, I also realized that for some idiot reason I posted the unfinished version of chapter 1, so I also edited that.

Chapter 2: Earth and Fire

FP's POV

I sat down at the table, taking in the mounds of papers that were almost overflowing off the top. After I deposed my dad and became King of the Fire Kingdom, my amount of free time had decreased drastically. The fire people, although inherently neutral, were still reluctant to join the forces of good, and getting them to do so and convincing other neighboring kingdoms that we weren't evil was almost an impossible task. Luckily, PB had been a huge help. I picked up the first of the papers, something about a protest by members of the fire kingdom guard about the recent reductions in military size. I'd have to provide them with some sort of compensation, I thought, passing the paper to the side and moving on to the next one.

"Hey Princess." A voice called as a blue-robed man flew in the door, his trademark beard flapping as he moved. He landed and began to walk over to where I was working on all of the papers. He had helped me a great deal after Finn…disappeared.

_Flashback_

"_Finn?" Flame Princess grunted, standing back up on the surface of the Palatium._

"_I'm sorry FP." Jake replied._

"_Where's Finn?" FP said frantically._

"_You both slipped off the surface as the Palatium escaped. I only could grab one of you." Jake looked towards the ground sorrowfully._

"_No!"_

"_Flame Princess, Finn is gone!"_

"_NO! That's not true!"_

"_I saw him fly away, you have to accept that!"_

"_NO!" FP's eyes flared with rage, and she shot a fireball at Jake, which he narrowly dodged._

"_AAH! Flame Princess!"_

_But FP had already run away._

When they had returned to Ooo, Flame Princess had left Jake and gone to talk to the closest thing Finn had to family, the man who had forged the second crown for him, the Ice King. Although he at first appeared to be a jerk, Flame Princess found a box of tapes, showing the slow degradation of Ice King, or really, Simon's, sanity. And after hearing the Ice King's story from Marceline, Flame Princess had seen the similarities to Finn. Heroics and bravery were both evident, and Ice King really wasn't a jerk, he just was trying to find people who would accept him as he was. So when Flame Princess had left to take over the Fire Kingdom and forge it into a kingdom of heroes worthy of Finn, Ice King had followed, her loyal helper and friend. It was a strange friendship, but the massive differences between them had been no real obstacle. She found it a real symbol of how far the Fire Kingdom had come when the Fire and Ice Kingdoms signed an official alliance between the two kingdoms, sparked in part by a Fire Wolf who was returned to the Fire Kingdom by a snow golem.

(Kinda slipped out of FP's POV there, but we're back to her POV now)

"I can take these if you want." Ice King said, startling me out of my reflection. He picked up a stack of papers on the overloaded desk.

"Thanks." I replied, pulling an envelope off the stack and peering down at the address.

"Hmm. It's from PB." I spoke to myself, opening the envelope and unfolding the sheet of paper enclosed within.

_Dear Flame Princess,_

_Although in recent months the rest of the kingdoms have not accepted your belief that Finn is still alive, recent evidence suggests that he may have survived._

I gasped, then read on.

_According my Transphasal Detection Array, it is possible that he could have been thrown into a separate universe or even multiverse cycle. After careful triangulation and determining his probable trajectory, we have narrowed it down to three universes. Although this may seem like a relatively small number of universes, remember that each universe can span in size from smaller than a grain of sand to twice the size of ours. Thus, it may be hard to locate him, but I wished to inform you of the possibility._

_Princess Bubblegum_

I stood up from my place at the desk, nearly knocking over the papers. If Finn was still alive, I'd search across a universe for him. Well, in this case three.

Finn's POV.

Cold. Cold was the word that defined my existence right now. There was cold all around me, cold even inside my head. Actually, my head was the coldest part of my body right now. I wondered why that was, placing my hands on the top of my head. Or, I tried to place my hands on top of my head. For some reason my body moved of its own accord, steadily walking. Whenever I tried to move any part of my body, nothing happened. Weird. There was also something in my head, behind the door to the vault. No, wait. I was behind the door of the vault. That explained why I couldn't move any parts of my body. I walked over to the door (actually, I mentally imagined my consciousness walking over to the door) and opened it. Outside, where normally my gray and featureless imagination zone was located, populated only by penguins and Flame Princess (who he was kind of glad wasn't here, because Flame Princess was often not decently dressed in his imagination land, which was_ very_ distracting), an icy wasteland covered the land, with heavy snow covering everything. Just opening the door made him feel cold. But if it was so cold out there, why was it warm in here? He shut the door, walking back towards the center of the vault, past all the crazy things that had happened to him during his past lives. As he reached the center, he spotted a large hole, running vertically down through the vault. At the bottom, a small fire burned, melting a number of icy shards that appeared ominously like a hand, reaching for the weakly burning flame. The icy strands lead back to a crack in the wall of the vault, from which they appeared to have seeped through. I leapt down from the higher platform I was on, landing next to and inspecting the icy shards. Leaning down, I placed my hand on the shard.

"_submit to the cold submit to the ice and whispering snow freeze it all submit" _

A chorus of voices burst through my head and I took my hand back as if burned. I remembered that voice. That was the voice of the Crown. Looking around, I spotted the golden sword Flame Princess gave to me. Why it was in the vault I had no idea, maybe my subconscious had placed it in here, knowing I would need a weapon when the crown took over my mind. I picked up the sword and swung it over my head, bringing it down on to the ice with a resounding clash. The ice shattered, flying across the room. I raised my sword yet again, slicing another piece of the hand that extended towards the fire in the center of the room. It was then that I noticed that the shards had not been destroyed, but now steadily inched across the room from the spots where they landed towards the flame. I raised my sword, slicing one in half, but the two halves just continued towards the flame. I desperately kicked one away, searching for an idea. With a sudden burst of realization, I placed my sword in the flame of the fire, watching as the fire grew and turned blue with the introduction of the sword. As the sword began to glow red hot, I pulled it from the flame, slicing through another icy shard. Sure enough, the shard melted on contact, reduced to a harmless puddle. Encouraged, I sliced three more, when I realized that the large hand of ice that had been reaching towards the flame was approaching again. I raised my sword, dodging a shard of ice flying at my face, then deflected a second one heading for my knee. I leapt forwards, stabbing the hand with the glowing blade, then twisted the blade, shattering the ice hand into a million pieces that melted as the fell towards the ground. After ensuring that no shards survived, I ran over to the crack in the wall, through which ice had already started to grow. Focusing myself psychically, I concentrated my mental energy on repairing the breach. Steadily, the red material encompassing the walls of the vault grew seamlessly over the ice, shutting it out. Looking down at the floor, I noticed a small gem, reminiscent of those in the Crown, sitting on the floor where the hand had been. Stepping over to it, I stomped down, grinding my heel on it and reducing the gem to dust.

Omniscient POV:

The Crown was infuriated. First the boy escaped into the strange psychic prison he created, then he thwarts the attempt to penetrate through the shielding and destroy the pesky hopeful emotion, which was now stronger than ever. Worst of all, the gem of power the Crown was using to launch that assault had been destroyed, at least psychically. The physical gem of the crown now had turned gray from its standard red color, and this weaker version of the crown had only two gems, the stronger third still with the weakened old man who had forged this smaller Crown. The second gem remained safe inside the psychic ice fortress the Crown had established upon taking control of the feeble human's brain, defended by hundreds of icy warriors. In the meanwhile, the body of the human, still controlled by the Crown, trudged across the blank, frozen landscape. The human's body had recovered after the Crown had taken control of it, and now was ready to begin the conquest of this universe. The Crown just had to find a way to get off of the frozen planet. He continued walking, crossing over endless hills and icy plains, until in the distance he spotted smoke. Walking at an increased pace, he cleared over a hill, looking down to a small spacecraft, shaped roughly like a large egg with three heavy legs extending from the bottom, wider section, which tapered up to at the top a point and an upwards facing cockpit. A man walked around below it, clad in heavy clothes, speaking into some sort of transmissions device.

"The atmosphere is primarily oxygen, but there are no signs of life. It's negative 70 degrees Celsius out here, and this is on the equator. It probably hits absolute zero near the poles." The man spotted the human's body, with the crown on top. "Oh my god! There's some sort of boy out here! He's wearing only a t-shirt, and his skin is blue! He must be suffering from hypothermia…kid! Get over here! He's wearing some sort of crown…are there any mentions of ships carrying royalty nearby?...The princess of Jamalo Prime? He's not a girl, sir, definitely a boy. Besides, Jamalian royalty don't wear crowns. Come faster!"

The crown staggered towards the man, coming closer, until the man turned around, pulling a jacket out of a box.

"Put this on. And get inside the ship." The man said, turning around.

"No." The crown replied.

"Huh?" The man said.

"Come, brother, I must save you from the warmth, wrap you in the ice and snow."

"Okay, kid, stop playing around and get in the ship." He picked up the communicator, backing away. "Commander, come in. I don't think he is entirely sane…"

"Submit to the ice and put down your communication device!" The crown yelled, releasing a blast of ice, freezing the man solid. The communicator fell to the side, frantic voices still emanating from it.

"Carson! Do you read? Pick up Carson!"

The crown stepped forwards, crushing the communicator in a cruel imitation of how the gem of power had been crushed.

So, did you like it? Three points of view in one chapter! Pretty crazy, huh? Just wondering, do you prefer chapters like this, split into many different parts, or a series of narratives by each character each the length of one chapter? Also, a few notes:

Because the ship is not from the land of Ooo, I intentionally used "god" instead of glob.

The first POV was meant to be similar to Frost and Fire/Earth and Water in that an argument occurs, Cinnamon Bun, who in this is replaced by the Ice King, comforts FP, and they go on to rule the Fire Kingdom.


End file.
